Angeltown, Aquacity, Byzanbul, Istadium, Genial, Moscow: imaginary cities, cities with material substance, capitals in the spectral kingdoms of a simulation. In a world of the late twenty-first century, a weakened Europe is reduced to the role of an immersive theme park. There, people, aided by artificial intelligence, live as citizen-exhibits within faithful reconstructions of historical eras, denying their purposeless, depressive contemporary reality.
Behind this transformation lies the technological empire of magnate Devendra Puri, whose innovations have even turned consciousness—the final refuge of individuality—into a transferable commodity, a dataset that can be uploaded from one body to another. Within this unsettling world, executive Nikos Mavridis, security officer Vika Cortez, and spiritualist-guru Ignati Vasilievich Rostov fight to survive and retain their humanity, constantly navigating between cities, eras, bodies, and identities.
These are the Impossible Cities of a barren form of existence, where nothing is off-limits. A purgatory that resembles an inverted paradise, glimpsed through the shards of a broken mirror.
Mandis poses some highly relevant questions to our contemporary reality, existential questions regarding free will and human consciousness, all of which are currently threatened with being controlled by the tech-oligarchs of our times.
Kastaniotis, 2024, P. 992
